Re: [SLUG] MP3 Players on Linux

From: Richard Smoot (rsmoot@tampabay.rr.com)
Date: Sun Nov 19 2006 - 01:17:42 EST


On Saturday 18 November 2006 10:41, ronan wrote:
> Mark Polhamus wrote:
> > Richard Smoot wrote:
> >> I am running SUSE 9.3 Pro. I got my wife a Sandisk SMX1 1024R v2 player.
> >> I ripped a cd for her. I have the MP3 files ready. I hooked it up with
> >> the included USB cable. It says it is hooked up. I can't find it in the
> >> file manager to transfer the files.
> >> I have a USB card reader for my camera memory, which works perfectly.
> >> I thought this would be similar.
> >> How does an MP3 player show up in SUSE?
> >
> > Probably (hopefully) as a USB storage device.
>
> I have a Samsung MP3 player, that came formatted with a special
> Microsoft filesystem (MSP? MSF?) that enforces their DRM. I think this
> is related to their PlaysForSure-logo program. When you stick the
> device into a Windows machine, you have an option to transfer files via
> Windows Media Player, but not an option to mount it like a normal USB
> thumb drive (because it is not a FATxx or NTSC filesystem). It could
> not be used with Linux at all.
>
> Fortunately, I found (after a bit of Googling) that the Samsung website
> has downloadable firmware to fix this problem. After flashing a
> European edition of the firmware, not only was the filesystem FAT (works
> with vfat under Linux), but the European firmware also had the ability
> to play OGG audio files! I wonder why the US version was so crippled.
>
> Hopefully, if your Sandisk player is similarly hobbled, you can find a
> more friendly firmware. It might not be; you might just have to follow
> other people's advice for mounting the device. Does anyone know if all
> devices carrying the Microsoft "PlaysForSure" logo are required to have
> a non-mountable Microsoft filesystem to support their DRM?
>
> BTW, I recently saw a 1GB version of this Samsung YP-U2JXB MP3 player at
> Target for about $90. It does have FM radio, and the European firmware
> does work with the US radio stations (they usually tune to a different
> offset than we do, where we tune to odd tenths like 95.7, 100.3 the
> Europeans tend to put their stations on even tenths like 100.2, or even
> half-hundredths like 106.25). However, while this MP3 player does have
> a voice-recorder feature (records to WAV files), one feature that is
> sorely lacking is the ability to record the FM radio :-(
>
> --ronan
>
I have the Sandisk working OK now. It is 1GB with FM and cost only $44.99
delivered. It shows as device SDMX1 now.
I ran the "tail -f /var/log/messages" in a root shell and saw that it was
incrementing the address each time I unplugged and replugged it. I was
getting an error 110. while I was in that session, I tried again and got an
address it liked. No more error messages. I shut the session down and tried
the home directory and it was there. I dragged and dropped the CD I had
ripped and it worked perfectly in SUSE.

                               Richard Smoot
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